Lost in Translation? Pope Ponders an Update to Lord's Prayer

ROME — It has been a question of theological debate and liturgical interpretation for years, and now Pope Francis has joined the discussion: Does the Lord’s Prayer, Christendom’s resonant petition to the Almighty, need an update?

On Wednesday, Pope Francis said the common rendering of one line in the prayer — “lead us not into temptation” — was “not a good translation” from ancient texts. “Do not let us fall into temptation,” he suggested, might be better.

French Catholics adopted that change this week, and the pope suggested that Italian Catholics might want to follow suit.

The distinction is subtle and easy to miss, even for devout Christians.

“It is I who fall,” the pope said in Italian, in an interview with TV2000, an ecclesiastical television station in Rome. “But it is not He who pushes me into temptation.”

The pope elaborated. “A father does not push me into temptation, to see how I fell,” he said. “A father doesn’t do that. He helps you get up right away. What induces into temptation is Satan.”

The modified French version of the Lord’s Prayer.CreditPhilippe Lopez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In essence, the pope says, the prayer is asking God: “When Satan leads us into temptation, You please, give me a hand.”

While Francis’ idea may not prove controversial among theologians and liturgists, it could unsettle Catholics who learn from childhood to recite the Lord’s Prayer, also called the “Our Father.”

Traditionalist Catholic and Anglican bloggers were already taking Francis to task on Friday, suggesting that he was trying to upend settled tradition and that the distinctions he was drawing were clear enough to most worshipers.

A commentary on the website of TV2000, the station that interviewed the pope, which is owned by the Italian conference of Roman Catholic bishops, acknowledged that the pope’s words had stirred great interest, but added, “ it is worth recalling that this question is not new.”

“This is not a mere whim for Francis,” it said.

Dismissing Italian newspaper headlines suggesting that the pope wanted to change the Lord’s Prayer, the commentary pointed out that in a new translation of the Bible in 2008, Italian bishops had already come up with a new formulation: “Do not abandon us to temptation.”

Cardinals and bishops at the Vatican on Thursday.CreditL'Osservatore Romano, via Associated Press

The basic question, the commentary said, is whether God brings humans into temptation or whether “it is human weakness to surrender to the blandishments of the evil one.”

French bishops this week tweaked the Lord’s Prayer in French from “Ne nous soumets pas à la tentation” (roughly, “do not expose us to temptation”) to “Ne nous laisse pas entrer en tentation” (“do not let us give in to temptation”).

The new French version was first used during Mass on Sunday. It had been discussed for several years, and the updated translation was long-awaited, according to Guy de Kerimel, bishop of Grenoble.

The previous wording was “often misunderstood by believers,” Bishop Kerimel told French journalists last month, as many parishioners interpreted it to mean that God himself was responsible for the temptation that leads men to sin.

Other French-speaking churches have already made the switch to newer wording. In Belgium and Benin, the revised Lord’s Prayer was introduced earlier this year. The United Protestant Church of France also validated the change during its national synod in 2016.

Pope Francis said during an interview this week that a line of the Lord’s Prayer — “and lead us not into temptation” — was “not a good translation” from ancient texts.CreditAlessandro Bianchi/Reuters

The Church of England has two forms of the Lord’s Prayer – traditional and contemporary — but both use the same wording in seeking protection from temptation, according to the church’s website.

Pope Francis has generally shown a willingness to rethink liturgical translations. He recently took the controversial step of changing church law to give local bishops’ conferences more authority over translations of the liturgy. He was responding, in part, to widespread discontent with English translations that were literally correct but awkward and unfamiliar for worshipers.

In his interview on Wednesday, the pope was focusing on the prayer as it is rendered in Italian. But scholars have noted that the ambiguity in meaning predates even the Latin rendering of the phrase: “et ne nos inducas in tentationem.”

The word “tentationem,” and its Greek equivalent, have been translated in various ways over the centuries. Some say they better translate as trial or testing, and might refer either to the tribulations described in Scripture, like the suffering endured by Job, or even the Last Judgment.

The pope’s reflection was part of a nine-episode commentary on the Lord’s Prayer that TV2000 has broadcast every Wednesday evening since October. Each program includes an exchange between the Pope and the Rev. Marco Pozza, a prison chaplain in Padua known as “Father Spritz,” after the renowned Venetian aperitif, because of his work evangelizing young people in bars and on the streets.

In a book published in connection with the program, the pope said: “Evil is not something impalpable that spreads like the fog of Milan. It’s a person, Satan.”

Satan is a master of seduction, the pope added, and that, in the end, “is the meaning of the verse, ‘Do not let us fall into evil.’ We must be crafty in the good sense of the word, we must be sharp, have the ability to discern the lies of Satan with whom, I am convinced, it’s not possible to conduct a dialogue.”

Elisabetta Povoledo reported from Rome and Alan Cowell from London. Reporting was contributed by Daphné Anglès and Eloise Stark from Paris, and Laurie Goodstein from New York.